ALL SAINTS' DAY A DAY AMONG THE GRAVES. "There's Rosemary; That's for Remembrance."
Submitted by Rose Albrizio September 2004
Source:  Daily Picayune November 2, 1885 - Page 2

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ALL SAINTS' DAY
A DAY AMONG THE GRAVES.
"There's Rosemary; That's for Remembrance."

Of all the observances and religious ceremonies peculiar to the South none 
are more characteristic and interesting than the ceremonies attendant upon All 
Saints' Day. No matter how desolate, unvisited and neglected the cemeteries may 
be through all the year, as the time of All Saints' Day approaches these 
quiet resting places are thronged with busy workers cleaning up, repairing and 
decorating tombs for the one day in the year that is sacred to all the saints.

For a week or ten days before the first of November hundreds of men and boys 
find employment in the cemeteries. They make walks, trim flowers, dig flower 
beds, paint, whitewash and plaster the tombs. A colony of small shops spring up 
about the gates of these cities of the dead. To a stranger nothing can be 
more curious than the long rows of improvised booths and eating houses that line 
both sides of Canal street in the neighborhood of the "ridge" cemeteries. 
Tables are set up, charcoal furnaces lit, and the colored cooks tempt wayfarers, 
workmen and idlers with pots of French coffee, with platters of fried fish, 
ham, eggs, rice and cakes innumerable. Later on in the week women appear offering 
grave decorations for sale - these consist of miles of black and white bead 
ornaments, holy pictures, wreaths of shiny black paper cambric, of white tissue 
paper decorated with silver leaves, legends in purple immortelles - such as 
"To my Mother," doulouraux souvenirs, "A Mon fils," etc., etc. Mountains of 
white shells are sold, and a perfect seashore of sand, white and shining; and in 
the cemeteries the white walks are peopled with black-robed women tending the 
flowers about their beloved dead, while happy-voiced children play 
hide-and-seek in and out among the tombs, and tumble all unconsciously over the grassy 
mounds heaped above hearts whose disquiet has been merged into the sweet of rest 
perpetual.

THE OLDEST CEMETERIES in New Orleans are those known as the St. Louis 
Cemeteries, situated in the French quarter, just off Canal street. There are the old 
St. Louis and St. Louis Nos. 1, 2, and 3. The flower of the French and Spanish 
chivalry lie buried in the old St. Louis Cemeteries; the blood of kings and 
princes has gone to dust behind those mouldering walls of brick and stone. For 
hours one may wander up and down these quiet aisles, where the towering marble 
walls are emblazoned with the story of many a name famous in the history of 
the Province of Louisiana.

The first of the these cemeteries approached from Canal street is on Basin, 
between Conti and St. Louis streets. In this white city of the dead has grown a 
perfect stone forest of sepulchers - so thickly are they strewn that the 
common avenues have been cut off. On All Saints' Day, where there are thousands of 
the unremembered dead lying behind their untended, uncared tombs, the 
appearance is one of general decoration. Long white priest-blessed candles burn like 
pale stars at these strange shrines - wreaths, pictures, costly vases crowned 
with costly flowers, splendid designs woven in immortelles, are to be seen on 
all sides. Here in this place, in ponderous mausoleums, lie the bones of 
members of the Mandeville de Marigny family, of the Soniat-Dufossats, of the 
Derbignys, of the Villere and de Villieres. How long a list of gallant names rush to 
the lips as the visitor idles slowly by.

In the very heart of this old burying-place the sharp-sighted visitor may 
stumble across a tall gray stone table tomb - with a flat top - covered by a slab 
of gray stone. After a lapse of seventy-two years the grave was opened a few 
months since when all that was left of the great litigant of America, that 
quaint, sharp, brilliant old woman Myra Clark Gaines, was laid away with her 
father, Daniel Clark. Daniel Clark died in 1813. When the Clark tomb was opened to 
receive Mrs. Gaine's body it may be remembered that the workmen found only A 
THIN LINE OF DUST, far less than the outlines of a form, trailing along the 
narrow shelf. All was resolved into dust, not even a coffin nail was left. It 
was annihilation. Years ago this Clark monument was falling to pieces, but an 
inscription says it was rebuilt in 1854, by his old friend Richard Relf.

Not very far from the Clark tomb is another upon which no fresh flowers are 
placed on the morning of All Saints Day and before whose old-fashioned lettered 
head stone no blessed candles will flicker in the soft sunlight. This is the 
grave of Jean Etienne Bore, born in 1741 and dead in 1771. Bore was the first 
man to make sugar in Louisiana - his name should be one of the unforgotten 
names in the history of the sugar State.

Still another abandoned grave, or one that appears long neglected, in that of 
Francis Van Predelle, who served during the American Revolution as an officer 
in the French army, and who was buried in the old St. Louis 76 years ago - 
1808.

On another vault is traced the name and deeds of Etienne Marmial Perez, 
"ancient Lieutenant-Colonel" in service of Spain, and who died in 1814, aged 80 
years. How strangely eerie it makes one feel to read the last records of these 
old soldiers!

Presently the visitor turns from the inspection of the costly marble 
mausoleums and huge white houses of sepulchers, to the narrow walk bound on one side 
by the many storied rows of vaults where each of the dead has but indeed a 
narrow house. How strange and almost startling is the view as the eye glances down 
the black, long avenue along that solid wall of graves upon whose front the 
chiseler Time has been at work. The dust of ages made futile by the sacred dust 
within those narrow shelves has covered the crevices in the old brick wall 
and roof with vines and weeds, and as the wind blows the tall stalks of the 
yellow-flowered golden rod swing over the crumbling ledges to look down on the 
passers-by. How golden-yellow are the blossoms! Like the antlered golden 
candelabra we sometimes see on the high altars of the church. And where the plaster 
and mortar has broken off the spontaneous vines essay to hide 
THE TRACES OF MAN'S NEGLECT.

>From out the fissures the sturdy stems of the cockscomb spring out like 
swords, the bare stems crowned with a royal tuft of deepest crimson velvety bloom. 
All along the wall you may see these kindly efforts of Nature - her own 
unasked-for tributes to the forgotten dead.

But not all who lie in these vaults are forgotten; many of the grave-plates 
or slabs are sheltered by wooden railings, by glass cases, a shelf arrangement 
not unlike a mantelpiece, by a fender of iron, and upon these are placed 
wreaths of immortelles, fresh rosebuds, and other offerings of those who still 
remember. On some of the stained, uncared for tombs the weather-beaten remnants of 
former offerings still cling like fingers to the mildewed walls. Here one may 
note the empty mis-shapen frame work of a cross, and the old bead wreaths 
clinging in desperation look like nothing so much as giant spiders crawling over 
the graves in search of prey.

Down in one corner of the wall of vaults, with lizards playing all over the 
defaced stone, is marked the resting place of Charlotte, Countese Montecuccoli 
Laderchi, born Princess Oertingen Wallerstein, and Albert Laderchi, her son. 
It is many a long year since any one has visited that lowly grave, the old 
sexton, Moise Rodrigue, tells the curious visitor.

Following along the same wall that contains this royal dust an observing eye 
will discover one or two 
INTERESTING EPITAPHS. 
One is copied verbatim:
"O, husband dear, do pray for me as you'r now so wanst was I, and as I am now 
so you shall be. Prepared for death and follow me, where we will meet on this 
Heavenly shore, there we will meet to part no more. O, husband you I did 
adore and to my God I will implore, to guide you to this heavenly shore, to sing 
God's praise for ever more."

A little further on, the deep cut letters, almost wind and weather beaten out 
of the marble, is the following: 
"Our God to call us homeward
His only Son sent down.
And now still more to tempt our hearts,
Has taken up our own."

And again:
"Dear mother, go and dry your tears,
For I must lay here till Christ appears."

One wonders what sad-hearted, disappointed manner of man it was who leaves 
this valedictory on his grave:
"Friendship is but a name,
A charm that lulls to sleep,
A shade that follows wealth and fame,
And leaves the wretch to weep."

In the same cemetery, near the northern wall, stands the top of a flat tomb a 
beautiful but time-stained shaft of sculptured marble, erected over the 
remains of Clarice Duvalde, wife of Gov. C. C. Claiborne, the Governor of 
Louisiana. She died in 1809, only 20 years old. This Madame Claiborne - the first wife 
lies in a very different tomb in that tiny little patch of the graveyard once 
known as the 
UNCONSECRATED GROUND, 
and which place is boarded off by a rough fence from the rest of the graves. 
Forgotten graves - the unregarded dead! One must climb to the top of that 
fence and look over into the jungle that exists there to know what it means to 
call the dead forgotten. Until a few years ago the dust of Gov. Claiborne lay in 
this waste place, but it has been removed to the grandeur of a tomb in 
beautiful Metairie.

Looking down on the patch of ground one sees a thicket of brier and bramble 
and dank weeds all squirming and alive with green and brown lizards and ancient 
willows weep over the carved marble groves that show a hard white corner here 
and there through the thickets. A huge fire has just died out on a mound in 
the centre of this place, a ghostly, ghoulish fire it must have been, since the 
half-burned lids of two coffins still remain. One hastens in a fright from 
this spot that is unknown to all the town, and turning to the left looks in at 
the peaceful, carefully tended resting-place of Dr. Layton whose name is 
honored by all the citizens of New Orleans.

During the past year the great chess player, Paul Morphy, was placed in the 
family tomb in this graveyard, and a few weeks later his old mother was laid 
beside her son, and the quaint, narrow, brown little house on Royal street, with 
its round-eyed windows, its steep roof taller than the forest trees growing 
in the old courtyard, know them no more.

Two blocks farther away, facing on St. Louis and Claiborne streets, are the 
St. Louis Cemeteries, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. They extend in a row, one right after 
the other, and 
THE GRAVES ARE THICKER HERE
than in any other cemetery in town. In one of these Margaret, that rare and 
royal Lady Bountiful, is buried. On All Saints' Day what precious tributes of 
flowers and candles are hers; one might climb to Heaven on the ladder of 
prayers that are breathed out by the grateful ones for her sake.

In the St. Louis No. 1, a great square granite tomb, surmounted by a stately 
column of Scotch granite, has been, long years ago, erected to the memory of 
the noble Scotchman Alexander Milne, the founder, by act of the Legislature, of 
the Milne Orphan Asylum. Alexander Milne has been dead a long time and only 
dust and weeds lie on his grave; neither flowers nor any signs of regret or 
gratitude or remembrance - only that tall, grand, emblazoned shaft, that none 
regard save the newspaper writer.

One of the most imposing and costly tombs in the St. Louis Cemeteries is that 
of the Italian Benevolent Society. It cost $60,000, is large, the shape of a 
temple and in the niches are superbly carved statues.

In St. Louis No. 2 is the monument of the Spanish Benevolent Society with the 
simple impressive word "Silencio," carved upon the frieze.

Among the unusual inscriptions was noted the following:
"In health and strength put not your trust
The longest liver is but dust;
Prepare yourself, make no delay,
For I in haste was called away."

Many halt to gaze on the clean-kept tomb of Dominique Yon, one of Lafitte's 
lieutenants, a great politician in his day, and who was buried here by the 
Louisiana Legion at the expense of the municipality; that of the gallant commander 
of the Louisianians at Chalmette, Gen. J. B. Pluche; the ponderous monument 
of Chief Justice Francis Xavier Martin; the modest tomb of Oscar J. Dunn, 
Louisiana's colored Lieutenant Governor.

Long years ago the old Girod Street Cemetery was considered one of the 
"fashionable" burying grounds. The registers in charge of the kind old sexton go 
back for fifty years, and the graves in the crowded place are thicker than the 
pine trees in the scented forests of St. Tammany. The Girod Cemetery, 
notwithstanding it is sown so thick with the dead of ages, is a quiet, grassy old place, 
set out with trees whose branches bend in cathedral like arches over urn and 
sculptured pall. Here also one will find many tombs of names familiar. The 
granite vault of Benjamin Story is in this cemetery, also the grave of Richard 
Relf and the old tomb of the Slocomb family. Here also is the beautiful broken 
shaft around which the ivy wreaths its glossy leaves, erected to Lieut. Col. 
Bliss, the son-in-law and private secretary of President Zachery Taylor. About 
the base of the shaft are words telling the story of his gallant deeds when a 
soldier in the Mexican war. He died at Pascagoula of yellow fever in 1853.

Here is the modest tomb of Montegue,
THE HEROIC PILOT,
who "held her nozzle to the bank" till every being on the ill-fated boat had 
escaped to shore, when he, gallant martyr went down in flames that surmounted 
the pilot-house.

Another noteworthy grave - a queer gray stone charnel house, untended and 
fast falling to decay, is that of Jane Placide, the actress, who was buried there 
many years ago.

Irwin Russell, the brilliant, ill-starred young poet, the friend of Bunner, 
the protégé of the Scribners, was buried in the Girod Cemetery on Christmas Day 
of 1879.

In Girod street graveyard is also the tomb of Gen. William Palfrey and of Dr. 
Orson Carey. There are graves here that have not been opened in fifty years, 
but the prying fingers of Time are already busy at the crumbling bricks, and 
one is afraid to look too closely, as in the St. Louis Cemetery, for fear that 
he will see too much.

The Lafayette or Washington Street Cemetery had been put into the most 
beautiful order for the day of All Saints. Its wide walks of white shells glisten 
snow white in the sun, its marble tombs are as white and pure as when fresh 
quarried, and the long double rows of trees cast shadows on a sward like velvet, 
and the air is faint with the odor of the sweet olive blossoms.

In the Washington Cemetery lie buried
GEN. JOHN B. HOOD,
his wife and the little child Marie, who died on the same day with her 
father, and who lies in the same vault. The Hennen tomb, in which the Hood family 
are buried, is a triple compartment tomb of marble, in the shape of a cross, and 
surmounted by a slender marble cross. It stand next to the vacant lot which a 
year ago held the sacred dust of Gov. Allen, marked by the shaft of Tennessee 
marble, and which has been recently removed to Baton Rouge. Nothing is left 
but the tall frascati bushes and sweet-scented trees of olive.

There are many handsome vaults in this burial place. The tombs of Alfred and 
Henry Isaacson, of the Van Benthuysens, of Mr. Milton Randall, and of Mr. John 
P. Richardson. The Richardson tomb is enclosed in a tall oval mound of turf, 
with marble doors set in a stone frame. Behind those shining doors have been 
laid the forms of two little chilcren, Calla and Ella, and the flowers never 
fade on the threshold of their grave.

The girdle of high ground that is clasped half about the tomb and is called
THE RIDGE,
is crowned upon its summit by the ridge of cemeteries, the beautiful 
Metairie, the Greenwood, with its dense avenues of magnolias, the Firemen's Cemetery, 
and there many a hero lies under the sod; the two St. Patrick Cemeteries, the 
Jewish graveyard, the Masonic, the Odd Fellows', and others are on the ridge.

The citizen points with pride to the Metairie; to its hundred costly tombs 
and monuments, among the most beautiful of which are the Army of Tennessee 
monument, the Howard, Morris and Baldwin family tombs, as well as many others. The 
brilliant poet, scholar and physician, Dr. Bruns, lies under the turf in 
Metairie.

But recently the earth of Metairie has been mounded over the body of Walter 
Smallwood, the founder and real organizer of the New Orleans Produce Exchange. 
Quintero, the genial "Don" and gentle poet so long identified with the 
Picayune, sleeps in Metairie.

In the Firemen's Cemetery are many imposing monuments - that to Irad Ferry 
and of J. I. Munro, the war Mayor of New Orleans. Here also are the tombs of the 
Gasquet family, the Leeds tomb and the splendid Sloo monument.

How thronged is St. Patrick's and with what infinite care the green hillocks 
of graves are tended. There are faded, old inscriptions to be traced on the 
wooden headboards in the St. Patrick's No. 1; and across Canal street, behind 
the iron gateways of St. Patrick's No. 2, are many grander shafts of marble and 
piles of sculptured stone.

One of the most beautiful live oak trees in all the city stands right in the 
central pathway of St. Patrick's. The shadow of its branches rests upon a 
thousand graves; its festoons of crape-like moss swing in the wind. It is the 
monument that nature has erected sacred to those "who die in the Lord."

In many of the cemeteries
THE FLORAL TRIBUTES
this year were singularly fine and beautiful. At the large establishments of 
Maitre and Baker, the flower workers were busy filling orders up to noon of 
Sunday. These florists have had unusually large orders, and have been busy for 
the past two weeks getting ready for yesterday. Large set designs, done in 
handsome dried cape flowers and immortelles were largely used this year. Some of 
Maitre's executions in this way, and in natural flowers as well, were superb, 
and Baker sent out, amongst other things, a pillow of white camellias.

The tomb of Mr. Charles Howard was covered with flowers. Among the handsomest 
designs were a broken wheel of white flowers, six very tall crosses, six 
large flat wreaths, and numbers of choice bouquets of stephanotis, etc.

The tomb of Mike Farrell, the famous detective, was decorated with a large 
cushion of natural flowers, the gift of his old comrades.

The grave in Lafayette No. 1, of the young soldier, Charlie McLellan, who 
died in 1865, was ornamented with a large white anchor, many wreaths and bouquets.

The Kernochan monument in St. Louis Cemetery bore a beautiful tribute in 
natural flowers - "The Gates Ajar" - the golden gates being woven of yellow 
chrysanthemums, also a number of exquisite bouquets of the most costly hothouse 
flowers.

The grave of baby Marie, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Chas. Bush, in Metairie, 
had before its doors a large panel woven of white cape flowers with a bundle of 
half-ripe wheat in the centre, and underneath a sickle woven in purple 
immortelles. The panel rested on an easel of smilex.

At the Morris McGraw tomb was placed a superb anchor mounted on an easel; 
underneath in purple violets was traced the words "In God's Care." Beside this 
beautiful emblem stood a large scroll of white chrysanthemums.

At the Hyams tomb was a large design in natural flowers. Faith, Hope and 
Charity, represented by a cross, anchor and crown springing from a tall shaft. 
This was entirely made of roses.

At the Van Benthuysen tomb, in Washington Cemetery, was noted a beautiful 
star and crescent, also a large oval of flowers.

The Dell'Orto tomb in Metairie had the handsome design of Gates Ajar done in 
flowers, with the words, "Well Done" in the mossy sod beneath the gates. Also 
two large broken columns, with "Father" on one and "Mother" on the other.

Before the sealed marble doors of the De Marigny tomb, in St. Louis No. 1, 
was placed a superb bed of half-blown roses; this was four feet long and two 
wide. There were also many crosses and wreaths.

The offerings at the Maginnis monument consisted of a lovely wreath and 
pillow; the words Charlie and Baby were written across these white blossoms in 
letters of purple violets.

The family tomb of Mr. John Thorn was decorated with a large white pillow of 
flowers and a tall and handsome cross.

Two baskets of white rosebuds stood before the Hornor tomb.

It is the beautiful custom of the Continental Guards to place on All Saints 
Day a basket of flowers at the grave of each dead member. Yesterday the 
Continentals paid this touching tribute at thirty graves.

The Maginty tomb, in Metairie, had upon its marble steps a superb cross five 
feet high, made of natural flowers, also several wreaths.

The Mauberret tomb was ornamented with a lyre of fresh flowers that was 
almost five feet long.

At the receiving vault of Metairie, the grave containing the remains of the 
mother of Mrs. Hoyle, were placed pillows of flowers, and a beautiful cross and 
crown mounted on an oval frame.

The Marinoni tomb, in Metairie, was decorated with a chaste cross of white 
and pale pink flowers; the cross, mounted on a pedestal, stood four feet high.

A broken wreath hung over the tomb of J. J. Finney.

THE DAILY PICAYUNE - NEW ORLEANS, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1885 - page 2